As I write, I have my papers on me — and not just because I’m in Arizona. I’m an immigrant, and it is a condition of my admission to this great land that I carry documentary proof of my residency status with me at all times and be prepared to produce it to law-enforcement officials, whether on a business trip to Tucson or taking a 20-minute stroll in the woods back at my pad in New Hampshire.
Who would impose such an outrageous Nazi fascist discriminatory law?
Er, well, that would be Franklin Roosevelt.
But don’t let the fine print of the New Deal prevent you from going into full-scale meltdown. “Boycott Arizona-stan!” urges MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, surely a trifle Islamophobically. What has some blameless Central Asian basket case done to deserve being compared to a hellhole like Phoenix?
sasquatch – you may be referring to a small town where you have been resident for some time and where you are known. In large cities the election officials are often from another district and know no-one personally. I repeat – they know no-one personally. Furthermore, they have to deal with new residents who may have moved into the electoral district only recently.
A driver’s licence is not proof of citizenship. Again, all that is asked, when you did not receive your election card, is a driver’s licence or two envelopes with your name and address on it. That is, the checks are NOT for citizenship but for polling site residency. That’s all they want to verify. Nothing to do with citizenship.
Most urban residents don’t have FAST cards; they aren’t commercial truck drivers.
jamie macmaster – You wrote:
“to my understanding, this draft legislation is supported by MADD. Posted by: ET at May 3, 2010 10:19 AM”
“And??? There are lots of publicly-funded parasitic NGOs supporting legislation that intrudes on our basic Charter Rights.”
It is totally illogical to state that a ‘publicly-funded parasitic NGO…etc etc.. is ALSO an accurate definition of MADD. I think your description of MADD is without foundation.
You assert that the probable stop is ‘totally arbitrary’. I doubt that the police have the time or energy to engage in randomness. Randomness, by the way, not only usually produces no positive results, i.e., the lottery, but, can produce negative results – where the feedback from the population becomes negative.
Therefore, as a cost-effective and crime-preventive measure, your assertion that the police will move into purely arbitrary behaviour is without evidence and relies instead, on your own opinions about police.
And when your arguments fail, I see that you move into insults.
That in itself is a ‘brutal action’ rather akin to the emotional state of a random police act.
Again, you’ve provided no evidence nor logic to convince me that such legislation is the grounds for a ‘police state’.
ET said: “phantom – Canada is not under direct attack, as is the US, by Islamic fascism. The US has every right to be vigilant about its citizenship.”
Well actually, we are. We’re just not important enough for them to spend their A-team resources on. We’ve been lucky enough to dodge the bullets so far. Toronto 18 springs to mind.
I’ve got an open wound wrt the INS, so forgive me again if I get a little cranky.
Yes the USA is within its rights to be “vigilant about its citizenship.”
But that’s the problem. They aren’t vigilant. They’re abusive. They abuse respectable, upright people on the one hand and are obstinately negligent with scofflaws on the other.
12 -million- illegals in the country, but a trained physical therapist who meets all the criteria, has filled out all the forms, paid all the money and then some, dotted every i and crossed every t, CAN’T GET HIS PAPERS PROCESSED. Ten years, ET. Ten freakin’ years of morons losing papers without which you can be deported. I’ve got gray hairs from that, let me tell you.
Did you know Arizona has a special section in the driver’s license bureau that handles legal immigrants who can’t get INS documents? They do. I know that because I had to phone them up every year for three years to get my AZ license renewed. INS didn’t update my paperwork for three years, and would not return calls to the AZ MVD.
If my case were an exception and I was just one guy out of thousands who’d been seen off, oh well. But my case is -not- an exception. Its -normal-. Yes there are people who breeze through the process, but they are often people who “have friends” if you know what I mean, or are people hired by large corporations which “have friends”.
Like Schwann’s in Minnesota. They import minimum wage labor from Somalia. Mr. Somali dude (and family!) gets his green card toute suite so he can go work on the pizza line for $6.50/hr. Meanwhile doctors at the town hospital can’t get their H1B renewed, and have to go off-staff and maybe even back home to Canada while they wait for INS to process their legal status, which by the rules they are 100% entitled to.
Not to mention the illegals also working places with fake papers that nobody ever looks at too closely. Places which shall remain nameless, but I can name the names. You’d recognize them. Like, who do you think cuts the lawn at a major computer company in Chandler AZ? For $3.00/hr.
All of the above is why the state of Arizona is moving forward as they are. They can’t wait any longer for the feds to become rational and functional, they have to handle the situation. Because as the Mexican lady in the video above could tell you, legal immigrants have been through a harrowing experience. That experience is made a mockery of by Federal policy on illegals. You have to be a world class chump to follow the INS rules, and most Mexicans just flatly don’t bother.
Now, as to Jaimie McMaster: “Bullsh-t: The proposed legislation would allow the stop to be totally arbitrary.”
Canadian cops can -already- pull you over for nothing Jaimie. They pull over motorcyclists all the time for nothing. No probable cause, no suspicion of whatever, zippo.
However your assertion re. Arizona is incorrect. Probable cause is still required. The AZ police -can’t- stop you for nothing. Not constitutional.
What has changed is that Arizona police are now enabled by the new state law to ask about immigration status. Previously the feds -forbade- them from asking, by use of various pressure tactics. With a state law specifically giving them the power to do so, they can ignore the feds and apply the law as it is meant to be applied.
What everyone seems to be ignoring is that the State of Arizona does not make the rules about who is legal and who is not. The purpose of the law is not to death-march Mexicans out of the state. The purpose is to force Washington to fix their disgraceful, hideously non-functional immigration policy. Either allow fruit pickers and lawn cutters to enter the country legally and live there legally, or don’t. But they aren’t going to let 12 million tax dodgers keep sucking all the money out of the place.
Dumb asses of the Left can’t understand this was never EVER about racists not liking Mexicans. This was always about Washington socialists sliding cheap/forced labor in under the door.
ET, you are also 100% right that Canada is not a shining example of how to do it. However the one thing Ottawa does do right that the Americans don’t, is they tell you right up front if your application will be accepted or not. If you meet the criteria, you get in. If not, you don’t.
But your example of the Korean guy is instructive. Government employees are abusive. There should be fewer of them, and they should be strongly restricted in their powers. Daunted is what they should be. Hesitant to impose. We have just the opposite, and it isn’t working well.
Rant off, I’m going to go do something constructive now. Like beat a chunk of concrete with a big f-ing hammer. This stuff just torques me off like you can’t believe.
Posted by: ET at May 2, 2010 9:27 PM>
“I see nothing wrong about carrying identity papers that certify that one is a citizen or a legal immigrant to a nation.”
I’m inclined to agree with you on this one ET. My earlier comment about the growing police state spreading throughout western countries had nothing to do with the Arizona legislation. That is a national right of a sovereign country to protect its citizens and economy from unknown entities entering or infiltrating their society with unknown intentions. How can you protect those interests without inconveniencing citizens by asking for proof of their identity?
How can Obamba be “president” without showing proof of his?
The unfortunate fact is that the American Federal government does absolutely nothing to protect itself from the third world invasion on its southern border. It has troops in +/- 160 countries around the world and protects the borders of foreign nations from Saudi Arabia to South Korea to Germany since WW2. All at the expense of American taxpayers who have no voice in their governments affairs anymore. Germany is giving billions of dollars to Greece, because it hasn’t needed to fund a military in over 60 years, who’s really funding Greece?
The US government is running amok, the increased check stops, legislations such as the Patriot Act and so on, are the distinctive signs of totalitarianism and a looming police state.
“Canadian cops can -already- pull you over for nothing Jaimie. They pull over motorcyclists all the time for nothing. No probable cause, no suspicion of whatever, zippo. Posted by: The Phantom at May 3, 2010 12:11 PM”
Oh, they can pull you over, but if they find something and can’t articulate probable cause, then the case will in all likelihood be tossed, see Supreme Court of Canada, R. vs. Harrison: http://csc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2009/2009scc34/2009scc34.html
The proposed DWI legislation would circumvent the necessity of showing the valid reasons for the stop.
“your assertion that the police will move into purely arbitrary behaviour is without evidence and relies instead, on your own opinions about police.”
Okay. Formed after 27 years of service in Canadian Police Forces.
FDR pretty much was a fascist (and a thief, and a liar, etc.) … what’s your point?
Jaimie, the phrase “in all likelihood” covers my point. In Canada police have the specific power to detain anyone, at any time, for no reason. There’s a limit to the length of time they can hold you, but that limit is longer than 24 hours, right? Process = punishment.
Besides, I’ve been pulled over on my bike so many times it makes me giggle when people start quoting Supreme Court cases. Cops pull bikes over on spec to see if they can fish a license/registration/insurance charge out of it. You know they do.
In Arizona police do not have that power. If they can’t come up with even a fig leaf of probable cause then -they- get charged if they pull you over. Also sued out of their socks. And fired.
So illegals are not going to be getting hassled for being brown. They are going to be hassled for double parking, littering, bad lane changes, noise complaints, not cutting the grass, junk in the yard, selling drugs on street corners all over Phoenix as they presently do, and etc.
As a Canadian citizen I can be hassled for driving while white, if OPP brass decide they want to do that this week. Or showing up at a demonstration with a camera. Or walking down the street in Caledonia with a Canadian flag.
Canada sucks a lot harder than Arizona, you ask me.
At what point will California be willing to boycott the water they receive from Arizona?
jamie – now you are trying to validate your point by claiming that you were a police officer. No proof of course; we have to trust your word.
But, you are contradicting yourself. You say that the proposed legislation will enable the police to stop anyone ‘without just or observable cause’. But you state that the current situation is that IF they stop you now and ‘find something without that probable cause’ then any case is invalidated. So, why would an officer pull someone over, now, without cause, when such an act could not result in a legal case?
ET said: “Again, you’ve provided no evidence nor logic to convince me that such legislation is the grounds for a ‘police state’.”
ET, even you have got to admit that while ID requirements do not make a police state, all police states have stringent ID requirements. And the more oppressive they are, the more requirements there are.
What makes a state oppressive is how they use ID, how hard it is to get and what penalties there are if your papers are not in order.
My point is that legal immigrants risk serious penalties and face massive inconvenience in the USA at exactly the same time that 12 million illegals face essentially none. That’s insane, morally reprehensible, and it can’t continue.
Arizona is just the first state to take up the fight is all.
ET asks: “So, why would an officer pull someone over, now, without cause, when such an act could not result in a legal case?”
Process = punishment ma’am. Sometimes they do it just to see the look on your face. Sometimes as a policy.
Example, we have Cayuga Dragway down here, aka Toronto Motorsports Park. They have Test and Tune race weekends. OPP stops kids with race cars on hwy 54 in Caledonia, York and Cayuga. No reason, they just stop them and search their cars. For an hour, sometimes. Every damn weekend they do this.
The purpose is to let the hot-rod punks know they are on OPP’s turf.
Same deal with bikes at Port Dover.
There’s a fine line between proper policing and being a problem for everybody. OPP spends a lot of time on the wrong side of that line around here.
Its called abuse of power, and its getting to be the rule and not the exception. That’s how police states get established.
What’s hilarious is the spectacle of the same idiot Lefties who created this situation in Canada accusing Arizona of doing it.
The latest telephone poll taken by the Arizona Governor’s Office asked whether people who live in Arizona think illegal immigration is a serious problem?
29% responded, “Yes, it is a serious problem.”
71% responded, “No es una problema seriosa aqui.”
When laws with wide public support are not enforced there are usually very corrupt reasons behind the inaction.
Once again, J.S. Mill has proved prescient.
Free institutions cannot exist in a multi-ethnic nation.
“Israel has been ‘Arizona’ all along.”
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/04/israel-has-been-arizona-all-along.html
Open borders just means your allowing land to be taken by someone else.
Its a sign thats says :” All the land you can grab”, we deem it of none value.
Only people who feel America has no legacy or future, would believe she has nothing to share with the World. Those types would rejoice in allowing themselves to become pillaged by intruders?
The first rule of any Government is the security of its borders, otherwise the social contract between the governed & its representatives has been broken.
Arizona is well with in its rights to self protection.
JMO
You say that the proposed legislation will enable the police to stop anyone ‘without just or observable cause’.Posted by: ET at May 3, 2010 2:22 PM
Yup…for the purpose of determining if the driver has been drinking.
But you state that the current situation is that IF they stop you now and ‘find something without that probable cause’ then any case is invalidated. Posted by: ET at May 3, 2010 2:22 PM
Not necessarily any/every case, but there’s a damned good chance that the evidence would be tossed – by virtue of Sec. 24 of The Charter – recently backed up by Case Law decisions such as R vs. Harrison.
So, why would an officer pull someone over, now, without cause, when such an act could not result in a legal case?Posted by: ET at May 3, 2010 2:22 PM
Myriad of reasons: it’s their job; simple curiosity; gut feelings.
Probable cause does not have to be an offence against a statute. For example, if the officer is able to articulate circumstances that could convince a court that the reasons for stopping the car were valid, then probable cause would be established.
At about the same time the SCC made the Harrison ruling, it reversed an Ont. SC ruling that had thrown out weapons charges laid by Metro PF aginst some punks who were leaving a parking lot immediately after some kind of disturbance.
The lower court had ruled that the police didn’t have grounds to stop and serach the cars and occupants…because of the circimstances, the SCC disagreed.
Oh, one more thing.
“jamie – now you are trying to validate your point by claiming that you were a police officer. No proof of course; we have to trust your word.”Posted by: ET at May 3, 2010 2:22 PM
No, you don’t have to trust my word at all. I could care less if you do or you don’t.
Arizona’s immigration???
Sorry, I got my own problems…